Ramos saw action in Normandy during World War II

Published 5:53 pm, Friday, March 24, 2017

Benito Aguilar Ramos did whatever he could to make money before joining the Army.

Benito Aguilar Ramos did whatever he could to make money before joining the Army.

Photo: Courtesy

Ramos saw action in Normandy during World War II

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Raised in poverty on the city’s West Side, Benito Aguilar Ramos dropped out of school at 8 years old to help support his family.

Shining shoes and selling newspapers, Ramos did whatever he could to make money before joining the Army as a teen.

“He would probably tell you that he joined the service to escape,” his oldest son Richard Ramos said. “That was his way out.”

Sent to the European Theater as part of the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division, Ramos was injured twice; once while parachuting into Normandy and another time after a grenade blew up in front of him, his son Tony Ramos said.

Returning home to marry and start a family, Ramos was an attentive father, coaching the neighborhood softball team and taking his children to area lakes for swimming and picnics.

“We were not wealthy, but we have good memories,” his daughter Grace Covarrubias said.

“He ended up buying me a bike that cost him $10,” a lot of money in the early 1960s, Richard Ramos recalled. “It did not look like much.”

Arriving home, Ramos “put it on top of his bench and tore that sucker apart. We sanded down the fenders, and the body, primed it and he painted it,” Richard Ramos said. “He painted in two-tone. There was not another bike in my neighborhood painted two-tone, with racing stripes on it.”

During some of the family’s leaner times, Ramos “would get up on Monday morning and take our radio with him,” Richard Ramos said. “On the way to work, he’d stop at the pawn shop and pawn it so he could buy groceries; on Friday, he’d cash his paycheck and take the radio out so we would have music for the weekend. He’d tell us, ‘I’m bringing the music home.’

“That was our entertainment for a long time, that radio,” Richard Ramos said.